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Knowledge capture from experts is important when that knowledge is of value, scarce, and threatened by loss, as is the case with the expected departure of “baby boomers” from the workforce. This paper seeks to provide a theoretically grounded, practical methodology for initial knowledge capture and ongoing maintenance of this knowledge using “Web 2.0” technologies.

The paper used a participatory action research project in which a methodology was developed for the capture of knowledge from experts in an organization experiencing both knowledge loss and rapid growth. The methodology used simple, affordable technologies such as digital cameras and digital editors, Wikis with a “semantic web” and social tagging.

The paper was able to integrate an initial knowledge capture into an ongoing cycle of knowledge organizing, sharing and maintenance. It was found that, whilst it is an economical and appropriate solution to problems of knowledge loss and knowledge sharing, sustainability of the information capture and its validation and ongoing maintenance by others require explicit management attention.

This methodology provides a process model for investigating the conversion of tacit to explicit knowledge and the effectiveness of knowledge capture methods for inter‐generational knowledge in particular, but knowledge capture from experts in general.

The knowledge capture methodology derived in this project can be used by managers and practitioners to address knowledge loss and under‐utilization.

The methodology is original and based on a process model of tacit‐explicit knowledge conversion. It uses cheap accessible tools, integrates an initial capture into an ongoing lifecycle, and uses modern, lightweight Web 2.0 tools and concepts.

Organisations must continually innovate to remain competitive. A by‐product of innovation is new knowledge. In a knowledge economy, an organisation's ability to manage its knowledge can mean the difference between commercial success and failure. A key aspect of being able to manage knowledge is the ability to identify and capture it. This paper aims to present the development of the knowledge‐capture report (KCR) and the results of its use at the third TeamWork demonstration event for collaborative working.

Quantifying the number of discrete pieces of knowledge captured in the KCR and categorising the type and quantity of knowledge captured demonstrate the practicality and effectiveness of the KCR in a dynamic multidisciplinary design team environment.

The different approaches that were observed and adopted by the participants using the KCR highlight a number of key issues that need to be considered when attempting to capture knowledge in a constantly evolving design environment.

The use of the KCR by a wide range of industry practitioners demonstrates a quick, effective and low‐cost approach to capturing project knowledge and events. It could be adopted easily by the engineering and construction (AEC) industry as an entry point to managing knowledge, particularly in complex, multi‐disciplinary design environments.

Popularity in knowledge management has, unfortunately, not been matched by parallel empirical research on the processes, challenges and benefits of knowledge capture in small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the construction industry, given the fact that 99 per cent of firms in the UK construction industry can be classified as SMEs. This paper aims to discuss the output of a research study, which is focused on knowledge capture in SMEs in construction industry. The paper also aims to present and discuss a computer‐based awareness tool on knowledge capture underpinned by Kolb's experiential learning theory.

The empirical study involved a total of 51 professionals from 26 SMEs in the construction industry. Grounded theory approach was adopted. Also, a content analysis was considered.

The results show that there is lack of awareness of complex issues associated with an effective knowledge capture process as well as ensuing benefits for SMEs in the construction industry. The effective implementation of knowledge capture in SMEs is partly dependent on the vision and flair of the owner/partners of the organisation. It is also determined by culture, structure, people, finance and technology, which warrants a coherent and structured approach.

A computer‐based awareness tool which is underpinned by Kolb's experiential learning theory.

Collaborative ontology editing tools enable distributed user groups to build and maintain ontologies. Enterprises that use these tools to simply capture knowledge for a given ontological structure face the following problems: isolated software solution requiring its own user management; the user interface often does not provide a look‐and‐feel that is familiar to users; additional security issues; hard to integrate into existing electronic work flows; and additional deployment and training costs. This paper aims to investigate these issues.

To address these problems, the author designed, developed, and validated a plug‐in concept for widely‐used enterprise content and collaboration portals. The prototype is implemented as a Microsoft SharePoint web part and was validated in the risk and compliance management domain.

The research results enable enterprises to capture knowledge efficiently within given organizational and ontological structures. Considerable cost and time savings were realized in the conducted case study.

According to the results of the literature survey, this work represents the first research effort that provides a generic approach to supporting and increasing the efficiency of ontological knowledge capturing processes by enterprise portals.

With the rapid development in the internet technologies, the applications of big data in construction have seen considerable attention. Currently, there are many input/output modes of capturing construction knowledge related to all construction stages. On the other hand, building information modelling (BIM) systems have been developed to help in storing various structured data of buildings. However, these systems cannot fully capture the knowledge and unstructured data used in the operation of building systems in a usable format that uses the intelligent capabilities of BIM systems. Therefore, this research aims to adopt the concept of big data and develop a spoken dialogue BIM system to capture buildings operation knowledge, particularly for building maintenance and refurbishment.

The proposed system integrates cloud-based spoken dialogue system and case-based reasoning BIM system.

The system acts as an interactive expert agent that seeks answers from the user for questions specific to building maintenance problems and helps searching for solutions from previously stored knowledge cases. The practices of monitoring and maintaining buildings performance can be more efficient by the retrieval of relevant solutions from the captured knowledge to new problems when maintaining buildings components. The developed system enables easier capture and search for solutions to new problems with a more comprehensive retrieval of information.

Capturing multi-modes data into BIM systems using the cloud-based spoken dialogue systems will help construction teams use the high volume of data generated over building lifecycle and search for the most suitable solutions for maintenance problems. This new area of research also contributes to the current BIM systems by advancing their capabilities to instantly capture and retrieve knowledge of operations instead of only information.

The purpose of the paper is to propose a methodology for organizations to use to assess the risk of knowledge loss should a specific employee leave. The article also proposes actions that can be taken by the organization to capture this knowledge before it is lost.

Applied research based on the systems analysis approach.

The paper finds that it is possible to create a system for identifying which knowledge is most likely to be lost and to guide an organization towards the appropriate actions for capturing that knowledge before it is lost.

The process has only been piloted on a single organization and with a limited number of subjects. However, the results are promising, and future research is focused on exploring generalizability.

The paper provides a process that will assist managers in making better decisions when allocating resources for capturing knowledge from departing individuals.

The process introduces a new social dynamic in the assessment of individuals which may have an impact on organizational dynamics.

This is a very innovative and original application of traditional risk assessment principles.

The aim of this paper is to research the practice of knowledge management (KM) in not-for-profit (NFP), small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to identify gaps in the current body of knowledge. Previous work has been conducted in small, medium and large enterprises; however, NFP SMEs have been underexamined. Given the prevalence of NFP, SMEs’ further research is warranted.

Using a case study methodology, this research advances previous KM work (Hume and Hume, 2008). Based on previous work in SMEs, KM and the application to NFP organizations, this work offers a set of propositions related to strategic development of KM in NFP organizations with multiple data sources across hierarchical levels sought and analyzed within each of the case studies. This process provided data variation. Collection continued until theoretical saturation was achieved. The paper supports analysis with the use of Leximancer 3.0 and offers a unique approach to qualitative research using textual and narrative analysis.

This paper explores the definition of knowledge, the importance of knowledge planning, capture and diffusion and offers development in NFP SMEs. The paper concludes by introducing the link between KM and internal marketing to address the importance of cultural and social issues of “me” which are central to knowledge capture, renewal and sustainable KM in NFP organizations. The paper introduces socialization strategies and informal knowledge capture specific to the transient, volunteer and permanent employee mix in NFP organizations and introduces the notion of understanding the significance of social mission to employees and volunteers in the embodiment of KM.

This study has aimed to access all empirical articles in the field of KM in SMEs. To ensure the consideration of the advancement in wireless, mobile computing technology and smartphones as KM support, articles from 2005 onwards were primarily sought. This search restriction has limited the role of earlier works in the research. It is arguable that the sample cases may not offer a comprehensive coverage of all NFP firms, with the qualitative approach further limiting the generalization of the findings.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, KM has been applied specifically in very few NFP SME firms, with scant exploration of the constructs of socialization, social mission and informal knowledge structure in NFP considered or previously published in academic journals.

A study was carried out at OILEX from September to November 1999 which examined the extent to which the organisation was capturing and sharing its knowledge and experience. Evidence suggested that OILEX was capturing its experience, but sharing of this experience is limited. There was a need to recognise at top level that transforming “individual experience” into “corporate knowledge” is critical to the long‐term competitiveness of the organisation. This paper outlines approaches to knowledge capture and sharing within OILEX at present, and discusses the recommendations that were made in ways of levering the organisation's competitiveness for the future. External factors such as general trends in the industry, falling recruitment, an ageing workforce and use of contract workers have all made an impact on sustaining knowledge and experience within OILEX. Internal factors such as working culture, the specific demands of project work and the organisational structure are also cited. In a competitive environment, maximising all of the company's assets is crucial. This paper suggests ways in which OILEX can benefit from individual experience through its transformation into group learning, and discusses the implications for the company in adopting a programme of capturing and sharing learning. It goes on to highlight the ways in which more effective Knowledge Management impacts directly on savings in staff time, avoids duplication of work already carried out and allows the whole organisation to learn from previous mistakes. Ultimately, such learning leads to greater efficiency and productivity. Different teams within the organisation are able to draw on the learning of others to respond more quickly to problems. They can then transfer their learning back into the knowledge pool, thereby contributing to a constantly evolving “memory bank” of experience.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the current knowledge management activities at the European Space Operations Centre (ESOC), specifically in knowledge capture, sharing and preservation and focusing on the developed and adopted methods and on the results obtained related to the process of knowledge capture using video‐recording of experts.

The knowledge management activities undertaken at ESOC during the past years have been organized into four phases: preliminary study and investigation on knowledge management systems including a review of already existing initiatives; a pilot project within the Flight Dynamics area (a key technical domain within ESOC taking care of the orbit and attitude aspects for the satellite operations) with respect to the questions of knowledge transfer and its barriers; the definition of the ESOC knowledge management system; and the introduction of knowledge capture procedures.

The inventory of the knowledge assets and the analysis of the knowledge coverage and criticality were essential to be able to identify the existing knowledge in specific areas and to perform a gap analysis. Through this analysis, it is now possible to identify those areas requiring improvement and to allow management to make reliable decisions for which areas the knowledge level should be increased.

With regard to the firm strategic behaviours, it seems particularly crucial to exploit all three dimensions of proximity, in order to guarantee openness and sustain innovativeness and competitiveness. Concerning policy implications, the local governments should address their actions to help and promote the openness of technology districts and the formation of technology clusters. With this aim, actions should be devoted also to sustain single local firms that are part of a technology cluster but not of a technology district. These, in fact, by increasing their competitive position, may generate positive externalities in the local area, fostering the diffusion and sharing of knowledge in the area and then, acting as knowledge gatekeepers for the whole area.

The paper describes the implementation strategy of the knowledge management within ESOC. Based on this practical experience, guidelines can be derived for the implementation of a more general knowledge management system in the aerospace industry.

This study aims to identify and compare the knowledge and information retrieval needs from past projects and for future work among Italian and Japanese engineers. Engineering work, which is knowledge-intensive, is all the more critical as it both uses and generates knowledge for product and process innovation.

This research uses data collected from engineers in Italy and Japan from an online survey using open-ended questions in their native language. Answers were then translated into English and coded into pre-determined categories; statistical analyses including factor analysis were conducted.

For knowledge to be retrieved from past work, both Italian and Japanese engineers identified mainly experiential and systemic knowledge assets. For knowledge to be captured for future work, both groups picked experiential as well as conceptual knowledge related to the competitive environment of the firm absent from knowledge needs from past work. Finally, this research uncovered almost twice as fewer meta-categories for knowledge needs to be captured for future work compared to knowledge to be retrieved from past projects, as the former are by nature speculative and, therefore, difficult to foresee.

The study is limited to the engineering domain and to two countries. Further research should extend the scope beyond these two countries.

The study identified information and knowledge needs that could help inform the design of procedures to capture and document engineering work and the development of supporting information systems.

This research contributes to an increased understanding of the substance of information and knowledge needs in a knowledge-intensive environment such as engineering work and product/service development.